Once again, sorry for the wait. Gets busy here around the end of the symester, particularly since I STILL don't have my lappy working. Turns out the Mobo's fried. Boo.
And I'm responding separately, both for the sake of organizing my thoughts and for readability.
Anyway...
Doesn't that remind you of DI? Maybe that is just the way Blizzard likes to make games. Casters (=brain) rule over Melee builds (=fist).
Perhaps, but I think my originally grievance was the lack of balance in Diablo II as a whole, not as it compared to Diablo I. I just compare it to Diablo I, because it is the most comparable game I've played, and despite being more primitive, it is better in many respects. It does indeed share many of the same issues.
There isn't really an easy fix to that sort of dichotomy. I think the best I've seen (shameless plug) is once again Guild Wars. Adrenaline was ingenius. Sort of like Warrior mana that allows them to use attack skills at a decent rate, as well as actual spells, but neither is too much or too little (considering Warrior primary).
Oh, and CB is not a damage-based function. Not at all, it rather is based on the hitpoints of monsters you fight against.
You misunderstood this one. I meant that "all" it does is damage. It does damage proportional to enemy health, which is indeed powerful, but ultimately, that's still just damage, as opposed to something like Frozen Orb, which does damage, slows, and destroys corpses half the time.
I don't think that is true. A melee Paladin with 75% block and 95% resist all along with some decent defense and life and some %DR is a lot more near-indestructible than just about any caster I can think of. A Barb compensates with a huge life pool. The main problem is that casters can have a huge life pool now, too. Energy is a worthless attribute, not just since 'Insight', but I think when no one could buy mana pots and there were no Insights, caster builds were a bit more balanced and the Warcry Barbs you so loathe weren't as invincible as you describe them now.
The problem here is that you can achieve decent defense (though not the ungodly amounts Paladins can hit), damage reduction, and resistances on any caster while doing more damage in an area rather than to one target. AND you're probably ranged, so you tend to take less damage, which is, in my opinion, a major contributing factor to indestructibility. As anyone who's ever cheesed the The Bard's Tale with a bow knows, if the enemies can't hit you, you can't die.
I think a good way to restrict the big pros of melee builds was implemented with the Druid and his shape-shifting skills: You can't cast your ranged spells when shape-shifted, yet you only get the life (and defense) boost when shape-shifted.
I always like that aspect, but look at druids in comparison to the other classes, power-level-wise. They're more gimmicky than anything else. Not really sure where that thought takes us, but there it is.
Also elite armors should all require much Str, currently you can get a 467 base defense armor for lousy 77 Str.
This is a HUGE part of the problem.
So you really want an overpowered melee build? How about a properly skilled and equipped fanatic zealot or dragon tail assassin? Maybe not overpowered, but quite powerful.
More than an overpowered melee build, I'd like a lack of overpowered caster builds, but I suppose on some level, equity is better than a completely broken game. The problem there is that melee is still restricted to hitting one enemy at a time, while caster AoE skills do MORE damage than each hit (for the most part).
War Cry shouldn't work on PI monsters, as I said before. Apart from that, the skill itself is not overpowered. Insight and all the other oskill aura skills are. Note that without Insight and the ability to buy mana pots, War Cry was a challenge... And I still don't see that the world gets flooded by War Cry Barbs.
War Cry should indeed not do anything to physical immunes. That's one of the largest problems with it. The other is that you can stunlock everything but a few superuniques (including act bosses), which means the only threatening enemies are those that release damage passively (elemental enchanted bosses), those that explode on death (Undead Stygian Dolls), and those than can put enough damage potential out there to make you retreat before they die/before you stunlock them (Tomb Vipers). Everything else just charges you and runs into your stun wall. Ranged enemies get taunted.
The world isn't flooded with them for two reasons; most people don't realize how powerful they are, and they can't match the kill speed of the other classes in areas where the other classes aren't crippled (Blizzard sorceress squaring off against Cold Immunes), Realm games have become contests for finding out who can kill the most rapidly (or generate the largest numbers on the LCS) or who can find the most phat lewts. I'd think they would be a bit more popular on single player, though.
Interesting benchmark. But by that definition, static field, cold mastery, lightning fury, frozen orb, maul, bo, thorns, fire claws (fully synergized) and many other skills are out. It simply doesn't work this way - monsters and players are too different to be compared. Have you ever seen a player with 15000 life but only 2000 defense? Nope. I think this benchmark is seriously flawed. Tiger strike, critical strike, dim vision, ce, taunt, resistance auras, glacial spike... They could all be overpowered that way. Not a valid criterion.
The benchmark is only flawed because Blizzard decided to make it so. Look at Diablo I. Aside from Diablo's Apocalypse, neither players nor enemies could really do anything the other couldn't (I guess if you want to count high auto-hit on Blood Knights...). This is why tactical retreating and careful progression were necessary. Perhaps Blizzard thought (correctly?) that players did not like this aspect?
The enemies mindlessly run to their deaths (for the most part). Only those that can overpower players before the players can throw down something to render them useless (or dead) are threatening at all, which relegates it to cursing enemies, bugged enemies, enemies that can stunlock and/or run extremely fast to cut off retreat, and enemies that kill upon dying.
Succubi killing like you described exploited rather bad AI, no real strategy. Chain lightning positioning is quite comparable to the way many DII spells work, e.g. all the piercing Amazon skills, Nova monster grouping, Meteor use etc. You now seem to admit that indeed Insight and half magical half physical spells are the banes of balance in DII...
They are certainly some of the worst offenders. The difference I was trying to note is that in Diablo I, it was often more efficient to use grouping tactics, whereas in Diablo II, it is often more efficient to simply fire away until the enemies are dead, whether there is one or many, whether the pack is clumped or scattered.
It doesn't improve killing speed, it improves movement speed. And I stick to my statement.
It improves killing speed BY improving movement speed. A sorceress out of danger in less than a second can resume killing faster than one who has to retreat via running back to the nearest chokepoint to avoid getting swarmed. Having better mobility will result in more time casting spells and less time getting away if you're geared toward destruction as opposed to survival. In fact, teleport makes this very philosophy possible without slowing one's advance rate to a crawl. Hence, it improves killing speed.
Maybe that should have been included in hell difficulty in DII as well, but I think we already agreed that melees with high defense and ctb aren't overpowered. Or haven't we?
Yep. But the key word there is Melee. Holy shield is usable on caster paladins as well, which are, as far as I'm concerned, representative of a very large amount of what is wrong with the game right now.
Maybe. But you have to consider singleplayer, too. If you want a game that is hard for a group that is already trying to synergize each other (conviction, bo, oak, insight, lightning fury etc.), it quite possibly is impossible for a single warrior in singleplayer. If you want that, why not go MMORPG all the way? DII just isn't built that way.
Ramping life (and experience) was a step in the right direction. What about something like adding more resistance, even to the point of immunity, with each additional player? Keeping it doable for one man and having eight men play the same game does not a balanced game make.
I will agree with you that a lot of my grievances are built into the core of the game and cannot be changed. No, it is not the ideal game for me, but basically everything after the 1.09 patch was built specifically to unbalance the game in favor of the players, especially those who cheat. And even those facets that do not follow this trend (synergy) tend to dumb the game down somewhat. Instead of creating a unique build now, nine out of ten people you see on the realms play the same five skills as every other nine out of ten people (by character class). Not to mention people are now completely dependent on either broken items or their party to solve issues that used to require something as fancy as "plan B".
--me
And I'm responding separately, both for the sake of organizing my thoughts and for readability.
Anyway...
Doesn't that remind you of DI? Maybe that is just the way Blizzard likes to make games. Casters (=brain) rule over Melee builds (=fist).
Perhaps, but I think my originally grievance was the lack of balance in Diablo II as a whole, not as it compared to Diablo I. I just compare it to Diablo I, because it is the most comparable game I've played, and despite being more primitive, it is better in many respects. It does indeed share many of the same issues.
There isn't really an easy fix to that sort of dichotomy. I think the best I've seen (shameless plug) is once again Guild Wars. Adrenaline was ingenius. Sort of like Warrior mana that allows them to use attack skills at a decent rate, as well as actual spells, but neither is too much or too little (considering Warrior primary).
Oh, and CB is not a damage-based function. Not at all, it rather is based on the hitpoints of monsters you fight against.
You misunderstood this one. I meant that "all" it does is damage. It does damage proportional to enemy health, which is indeed powerful, but ultimately, that's still just damage, as opposed to something like Frozen Orb, which does damage, slows, and destroys corpses half the time.
I don't think that is true. A melee Paladin with 75% block and 95% resist all along with some decent defense and life and some %DR is a lot more near-indestructible than just about any caster I can think of. A Barb compensates with a huge life pool. The main problem is that casters can have a huge life pool now, too. Energy is a worthless attribute, not just since 'Insight', but I think when no one could buy mana pots and there were no Insights, caster builds were a bit more balanced and the Warcry Barbs you so loathe weren't as invincible as you describe them now.
The problem here is that you can achieve decent defense (though not the ungodly amounts Paladins can hit), damage reduction, and resistances on any caster while doing more damage in an area rather than to one target. AND you're probably ranged, so you tend to take less damage, which is, in my opinion, a major contributing factor to indestructibility. As anyone who's ever cheesed the The Bard's Tale with a bow knows, if the enemies can't hit you, you can't die.
I think a good way to restrict the big pros of melee builds was implemented with the Druid and his shape-shifting skills: You can't cast your ranged spells when shape-shifted, yet you only get the life (and defense) boost when shape-shifted.
I always like that aspect, but look at druids in comparison to the other classes, power-level-wise. They're more gimmicky than anything else. Not really sure where that thought takes us, but there it is.
Also elite armors should all require much Str, currently you can get a 467 base defense armor for lousy 77 Str.
This is a HUGE part of the problem.
So you really want an overpowered melee build? How about a properly skilled and equipped fanatic zealot or dragon tail assassin? Maybe not overpowered, but quite powerful.
More than an overpowered melee build, I'd like a lack of overpowered caster builds, but I suppose on some level, equity is better than a completely broken game. The problem there is that melee is still restricted to hitting one enemy at a time, while caster AoE skills do MORE damage than each hit (for the most part).
War Cry shouldn't work on PI monsters, as I said before. Apart from that, the skill itself is not overpowered. Insight and all the other oskill aura skills are. Note that without Insight and the ability to buy mana pots, War Cry was a challenge... And I still don't see that the world gets flooded by War Cry Barbs.
War Cry should indeed not do anything to physical immunes. That's one of the largest problems with it. The other is that you can stunlock everything but a few superuniques (including act bosses), which means the only threatening enemies are those that release damage passively (elemental enchanted bosses), those that explode on death (Undead Stygian Dolls), and those than can put enough damage potential out there to make you retreat before they die/before you stunlock them (Tomb Vipers). Everything else just charges you and runs into your stun wall. Ranged enemies get taunted.
The world isn't flooded with them for two reasons; most people don't realize how powerful they are, and they can't match the kill speed of the other classes in areas where the other classes aren't crippled (Blizzard sorceress squaring off against Cold Immunes), Realm games have become contests for finding out who can kill the most rapidly (or generate the largest numbers on the LCS) or who can find the most phat lewts. I'd think they would be a bit more popular on single player, though.
Interesting benchmark. But by that definition, static field, cold mastery, lightning fury, frozen orb, maul, bo, thorns, fire claws (fully synergized) and many other skills are out. It simply doesn't work this way - monsters and players are too different to be compared. Have you ever seen a player with 15000 life but only 2000 defense? Nope. I think this benchmark is seriously flawed. Tiger strike, critical strike, dim vision, ce, taunt, resistance auras, glacial spike... They could all be overpowered that way. Not a valid criterion.
The benchmark is only flawed because Blizzard decided to make it so. Look at Diablo I. Aside from Diablo's Apocalypse, neither players nor enemies could really do anything the other couldn't (I guess if you want to count high auto-hit on Blood Knights...). This is why tactical retreating and careful progression were necessary. Perhaps Blizzard thought (correctly?) that players did not like this aspect?
The enemies mindlessly run to their deaths (for the most part). Only those that can overpower players before the players can throw down something to render them useless (or dead) are threatening at all, which relegates it to cursing enemies, bugged enemies, enemies that can stunlock and/or run extremely fast to cut off retreat, and enemies that kill upon dying.
Succubi killing like you described exploited rather bad AI, no real strategy. Chain lightning positioning is quite comparable to the way many DII spells work, e.g. all the piercing Amazon skills, Nova monster grouping, Meteor use etc. You now seem to admit that indeed Insight and half magical half physical spells are the banes of balance in DII...
They are certainly some of the worst offenders. The difference I was trying to note is that in Diablo I, it was often more efficient to use grouping tactics, whereas in Diablo II, it is often more efficient to simply fire away until the enemies are dead, whether there is one or many, whether the pack is clumped or scattered.
It doesn't improve killing speed, it improves movement speed. And I stick to my statement.
It improves killing speed BY improving movement speed. A sorceress out of danger in less than a second can resume killing faster than one who has to retreat via running back to the nearest chokepoint to avoid getting swarmed. Having better mobility will result in more time casting spells and less time getting away if you're geared toward destruction as opposed to survival. In fact, teleport makes this very philosophy possible without slowing one's advance rate to a crawl. Hence, it improves killing speed.
Maybe that should have been included in hell difficulty in DII as well, but I think we already agreed that melees with high defense and ctb aren't overpowered. Or haven't we?
Yep. But the key word there is Melee. Holy shield is usable on caster paladins as well, which are, as far as I'm concerned, representative of a very large amount of what is wrong with the game right now.
Maybe. But you have to consider singleplayer, too. If you want a game that is hard for a group that is already trying to synergize each other (conviction, bo, oak, insight, lightning fury etc.), it quite possibly is impossible for a single warrior in singleplayer. If you want that, why not go MMORPG all the way? DII just isn't built that way.
Ramping life (and experience) was a step in the right direction. What about something like adding more resistance, even to the point of immunity, with each additional player? Keeping it doable for one man and having eight men play the same game does not a balanced game make.
I will agree with you that a lot of my grievances are built into the core of the game and cannot be changed. No, it is not the ideal game for me, but basically everything after the 1.09 patch was built specifically to unbalance the game in favor of the players, especially those who cheat. And even those facets that do not follow this trend (synergy) tend to dumb the game down somewhat. Instead of creating a unique build now, nine out of ten people you see on the realms play the same five skills as every other nine out of ten people (by character class). Not to mention people are now completely dependent on either broken items or their party to solve issues that used to require something as fancy as "plan B".
--me